Gaia Education’s Design for Sustainability
Join our online programme, Design for Sustainability. Receive a Certificate of Completion and contribute to the emergence of diverse regenerative cultures.
Gaia Education Design for Sustainability
Join our programme, Design for Sustainability. Receive a Certificate of Completion and contribute to the emergence of diverse regenerative cultures.
Gaia Education’s online programme, Design for Sustainability provides students with whole systems design skills, analytical abilities and practical tools to support the redesign of the human presence on Earth, one local community and bioregion at a time.
The programme, also offered in Spanish and Portuguese, is divided in four interconnected dimensions: Social Design, Ecological Design, Economic Design and Worldview, each conducted in an eight-week period, which can be taken individually or as a whole course.
The course is completed with the Design Studio – providing an opportunity to work with an international design team and focussing on real-life design projects.
Your Investment
Why does the world need sustainability designers?
We live in a rapidly changing world that is transforming before our very eyes. A multitude of deep and pressing concerns such as global inequality, climate change, biodiversity loss, unrestrained urbanisation and destructive forms of economic growth are calling for our immediate attention. All of us are called to actively be part of this civilisation-wide effort to co-create a healthier and more fulfilling world for all.
Gaia Education’s online programme Design for Sustainability will provide you with a deeper understanding of integrative whole systems design, analytical abilities, design thinking skills and practical tools to redesign the human presence on Earth, one local community and bioregion at a time. The overall aim is to transform our impact from degenerative to regenerative processes.
Receive a Certificate of Completion for Design for Sustainability and contribute to the emergence of diverse regenerative cultures.
Upon certification you will have the background and confidence to take an active role in designing for sustainability, both professionally and personally, working for small and large- scale community projects, eco-social enterprises or transition initiatives in civil society, the public sector or business.
You will feel ready to offer your contribution and facilitate others to contribute to the collaborative transformation of our existing communities, institutions and neighbourhoods towards more sustainable and regenerative patterns of production and consumption.
What is more, you will be able to support yourself and others in leading healthier, more joyful and more meaningful lives.
Read quotes from former students of our online programme Design for Sustainability
Our students make a change
At Gaia Education we are so proud of our students. They are the ones who go out and make a change in the world, applying the skills and knowledge gained from the teachings of the four dimensions of Design for Sustainability. We are very happy to appreciate and say a big thank you to all our students.
Thank you for all the great changes you create! We are grateful for what you do for Mother Earth.
“The content is very relevant to my professional life as an educator. I have integrated many ideas and a few of the videos into my courses. On a personal level the primary inspiration has been a shift in thinking from an obstacle and scarcity based mindset to a solution and abundance mindset. This is quite liberating.”
“This course is helping me understand the challenges we are facing in the world today and what the root causes are. What I find most valuable is integrating systems thinking in my approach and finding personal relevance in the content of the course. I would like to share the new insights I have gained with other people and I’m considering a new career path where I can engage further with key issues around inequality, climate change and economics. “
“… I have had 5 start-up businesses here since 2009 with a lot of problems as business dynamics are constantly shifting. None of them had the potential of fulfilling my desire to help others in a lasting and meaningful way that can be based on principles that will be universally acceptable. Now I have found a course that will allow me to make sure that I am on the right track and will most certainly be closer to taking up a new career at the end of this journey. I am looking forward to broaden my insights as well as get practical as I prefer experiential learning conditions. I wish all participants well on their endeavours and also congratulate the organisers/administrators/creators of this course on educating for the future… Evolutionary Change at Revolutionary Speed”
How the Course is Structured
The course is structured in such a way that by dedicating 10 hours a week to study and engagement with the material you will be able to follow the flow and and benefit a lot – enough to reach the level of understanding and the quality of completed assignments to successfully complete the course and earn your certification. We feel that 10 -12 hours per week of engagement is about the norm and leads to exceptional results and the ensuing successful professional pathways we are so glad to observe in many of our students.
The 10-month course totals 400 hours of study, leading to a Certificate of Completion. For those students interested not only in applying what they have learned to their own practice as professionals and activists, but who would also like to become a certified Gaia Education trainer and share this curriculum with others, this course is an important stepping stone towards that certification.
The e-learning programme consists of four dimensions: Social Design, Ecological Design, Economic Design and Worldview., each contained in an eight-week period. You will learn skills and effective methods to collaborate with others in regenerative design for societal transformation and the creation of thriving communities within vibrant regional economies. The course will explore case studies and best process examples that demonstrate how regenerative cultures use energy and materials with greater efficiency, distribute wealth more fairly and strive to eliminate the concept of waste, in order to regenerate the material, energy and social resources they depend upon as much as possible at the local and regional scale.
Once you have successfully completed the four dimensions you can sign up for the Design Studio – an exciting opportunity to work within a global design team composed of fellow students from different countries and focused on real world design projects that will give you the perfect opportunity to revise and apply what you have learned in the course. Have a look at the kind of design projects created in previous years here.
Course Dates 2018-2019
Receive a Certificate of Completion
To receive a Certificate of Completion students need to engage in all four dimensions plus the Design Studio over a 10-month period. However, the dimensions do not need to be completed within the same year. For those who require more time it is also possible to complete within 24 months, once registered in the full programme. At the end of their participation students will have successfully completed the minimum required activities for each dimension and a satisfactory team-design project.
Your Investment
The 4-D Framework for integrative whole systems design
At the heart of all of Gaia Education’s courses lies the 4-D Framework for integrative whole systems design.
The 4-D Framework transcends and includes the conventional three dimensional model of sustainability aiming to integrate social, ecological and economic concerns in the creation of sustainable solutions. The Framework does this by taking a more holistic approach that also addresses the critical importance of worldview and value-systems change as the main drivers of behaviour change and cultural transformation.
Design for Sustainability draws from the experience and expertise of a network of some of the most successful ecovillages, community projects and sustainable design practitioners and educators across the world.
The Curriculum
The curriculum content of GEDS has recently been substantially reviewed and rewritten by Gaia Education’s Head of Innovation and Design, Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl, who is also the author of the acclaimed new book Designing Regenerative Cultures.
The material not only reflects the best lessons and practices from communities and transition initiatives around the world, but also offers an up-to-date perspective of regenerative design for cities, bioregions, eco-social enterprises and regional economic development.
Below you can find a brief summary of what you will learn in each of the four dimensions and the Design Studio.
Social Dimension
The aim is to give you a better understanding of the true meaning of social equity, inclusivity and justice as well as the need for widespread participation and collaborative action in a collectively envisioned and implemented transition towards resilient, nourishing and thriving social systems. In your journey through the Social Dimension of Design for Sustainability you will rediscover the importance of community cohesion and collaborative rather than competitive advantage, and reconnect with the beauty, compassionate nature and innate power of human beings to co-design the changes they wish to see in their communities and bioregions.
In the Social dimension we will address the following questions:
- What is the vision that will support projects to be coherent and inspiring?
- How will decisions be made and conflicts resolved?
- How will we walk that delicate line between being an individual and growing our personal empowerment, while being part of a collective endeavour?
- How will we celebrate our diversity in a just and inclusive manner when we are challenged by our differences?
- What will we do to reconnect with the creative source in the web of life and bring a sense of beauty and artistic craftsmanship to everything we do?
- How will our group, organisation, project or community reach out to other local and bioregional communities, to build bridges and facilitate learning from each other and more effective collaboration towards shared goals?
For more detail on the content and structure of the Social Design dimension continue here.
Ecological Dimension
Ecological designers ensure that life-supporting natural functions are not only preserved but regenerated whenever possible. They work with Nature rather than against her. They understand that sustainable settlement design is the creation of predominantly self-reliant, self-maintaining, self-regenerating ‘living systems’ that can support thriving community life for all their inhabitants. They know that ecological concerns are fundamental to the design and development of ecovillages and sustainable intentional communities while recognising that such initiatives need to collaborate regionally and globally to improve the whole system for all of humanity and the wider community of life.
In the Ecological dimension you will address the following questions:
- Why is the current impact of humanity on the planet’s life support system degenerative and how can we change this?
- How can we co-create elegant solutions carefully adapted to the biocultural uniqueness of place?
- What is the wide range of water collection, management and ecological treatment technologies that can support us in the design of watershed stewardship systems?
- How can we use the best of permaculture, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and ecosystems regeneration to cocreate thriving regional food systems?
- Which renewable energy generation, energy efficiency and transport technologies can help us to create zero-carbon energy solutions while increasing community resilience and strengthening regional economies?
- What range of ecological construction methods are appropriate for which kind of local conditions and how can they support regenerative development at the local and regional scale?
For more detail on the content and structure of the Ecological dimension continue here.
Economic Dimension
Our current economic system is no longer sustainable, yet few are aware of the alternatives. Our aim is to give you a better understanding of those alternatives and the true meaning of economy and wealth. Participants will learn about existing systems and tools that are useful and explore how to redesign those that have proven dysfunctional, based on already tested alternatives.
In the Economic dimension you will address the following questions:
- What are the root causes and design faults of our current dysfunctional economic and monetary systems?
- How can we take local, regional and global action to shift the global economy towards sustainability and regeneration?
- What kind of complementary currency systems, community banks and local investment vehicles can help us to strengthen local and regional economies in global collaboration?
- Why is Growth Domestic Product an insufficient measure of wealth and wellbeing and what alternative indicators already exists?
- What methods and models are currently emerging in the field of new economics and the sharing economy to support collaborative consumption and peer-to-peer collaboration?
- How can we learn from successful experiments to revitalise local economies and promote social innovation and entrepreneurship?
- What legal and financial considerations are important for the creation of successful regenerative enterprises and sustainable business models?
For more detail on the content and structure of the Economic dimension continue here.
Worldview
Worldview invites you to become more conscious about how your own worldview and value system affects your perceived needs and how it informs the way you might propose and design solutions in any given situation. By identifying a series of valid perspectives, worldviews and value systems and putting them into context with each other, rather than seeing them as mutually exclusive or contradictory, we are taking the important first step to being able to facilitate the complex multi-stakeholder dialogues upon which the local, regional and global transition to sustainability and regenerative cultures will depend.
After completing the Worldview dimension, students will be able to:
- summarise the main characteristics of the dominant worldview and explain how its spread was closely linked to the development of Western science with its focus on the quantifiable, measurable and predictable.
- explain how over the last century, first physics, then chaos and complexity theory, and more recently earth systems science and biology have revealed a fundamentally unpredictable complex reality in which we participate and intervene perpetually.
- name a series of practices that have been used by effective change agents to reconnect with the natural world and gain strength and insight from activities like meditation, council, vision fasts and/or solo-time in nature.
- structure a multi-stakeholder engagement process in a way that integrates multiple perspectives into a shared whole systems understanding of any collaborative project they work with.
- design for whole systems health using health as an integrative framework that helps us to foster systemic wellbeing and resilience at local, regional and global scale.
For more detail on the content and structure of the Worldview continue here.
Design Studio
The objective of the Design Studio is to practise the application of Gaia Education’s Design For Sustainability principles. You will collaborate with an international design team to develop skills in applying what you have learned to real-world case studies. The case study serves as an integrative exercise where participants explore the relationships between personal, social, ecological and economic sustainability. Design teams will be created around a number of case studies that will be decided before the beginning of each Design Studio. These may, but do not necessarily need to be, drawn from initiatives that students are currently involved in.
For more information on the Design Studio continue here, or take a look at the design projects created in previous years.
A final word on the importance of integrative whole systems design
While your personal preferences and professional background may draw you to certain dimensions of the curriculum more than others, we invite you to consider the importance of integrative whole systems design very carefully. So many of the problems we are facing today stem from our compartmentalised approach to identifying and solving problems in isolation. In an interconnected and constantly changing world most problems and most solutions are always somehow hitched to each other.
Finding wise responses and truly transformative innovations to move us from the mess we are in towards a thriving future for all will require us to not just change our practices, but equally importantly, the way we think and the worldview and value systems we base our design decisions on. The GEDS curriculum has been carefully crafted to help you become a specialised generalist, able to facilitate multi-stakeholder conversations and help diverse teams create integrated whole systems design solutions. For this intention to be successful, we invite you to take the whole course first, even if you later choose to practise or teach predominantly in one of the four dimensions.
The value and significance of each dimension will be amplified and strengthened by a deeper understanding of the value and significance of all the other dimensions. To shift from a cultural narrative of separation and competition to a cultural narrative of interbeing, we need more people to be able to articulate the importance of seeing the whole picture and working as integrative whole systems designers. Please join this course. Your community and the community of life need your help in creating a thriving future for all!
Your Investment
As a Scottish Registered Charity we are able to offer an exceptionally good price. The cost of this unique and exciting programme is £1300 GBP for the full course instead of £1575. It may be the best investment you ever make for yourself.
If you choose to take one dimension at a time, then the cost of each dimension is £350 GBP and £175 GBP for the Design Studio.
More Information
Goddard College-Gaia Education Partnership
The Goddard College-Gaia Education partnership combines sustainability education with radical pedagogy and social justice.
The partnership allows students who complete Gaia Education’s Design for Sustainability online certification course to earn up to ten credits toward a bachelor’s degree at Goddard College.
Goddard College will also award a $1,000 Partnership Grant to Gaia graduates who enrol.
